The author describes and examines participatory knowing, participatory spirituality, and psycho-spiritual growth and transformation as experienced by a group of accomplished singers through their singing and the process of learning to sing.In so doing, his study brings rich contemporary research narrative as evidence of the key elements of the participatory revisioning of transpersonal...
Hypnagogia, a state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep, provides a palette where conscious awareness intertwines with dream images. This state is compared with synesthesia, the imaginal realm, and Jung's active imagination process as inspiration for artistic creation.
Further developing transpersonal psychology as a science has been impeded by the over emphasis on two approaches to building theory, namely grand theories that attempt to explain everything and mini-theories that avoid explaining much of anything. In between these extremes are "middle-range" transpersonal psychology theories that can better allow for scientific progress. They bracket...
Meant to be an authoritative guide for psychiatrists and others interested in understanding and applying ketamine psychedelic psychotherapy (KPP), this paper focuses on its pharmacology, phenomenology, and clinical applications. Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic widely used by physicians and veterinarians in the United States. In addition to its anesthetic and dissociative properties,...
Richard Yensen was a research fellow at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center from 1972 to 1976. He studied psychedelic psychotherapy with Stanislav Grof, M.D. and other senior staff. During this time he treated patients with substance abuse disorders, cancer, neurosis, and other health professionals seeking a training experience. Dr. Yensen did his Ph.D. dissertation on the use of MDA in...
Recent evidence has shown that ketamine treatment can facilitate psychological insight and symptom resolution in various psychiatric disorders.To aid this process, psychotherapeutic support should be considered a fundamental aspect of treatment.The psychedelic experience produced by ketamine can be a deeply meaningful source of enduring change and personal growth.The author has repeatedly...
Ketamine, via intravenous infusions, has emerged as a novel therapy for treatment-resistant depression, given rapid onset and demonstrable efficacy in both unipolar and bipolar depression. Duration of benefit, on the order of days, varies between these subtypes, but appears longer in unipolar depression. A unique property is reduction in suicidality although data are more limited. Strategies to...
A discussion of the nature of transformation and its relationship to psychedelic experiencesparticularly ketamine experiences-is presented and discussed along with a schema for thinking about types of states that may be encountered and transformations that may occur related to psychedelic use and practice. This is followed by a longitudinal historical approach for portraying and examining...
There is a surprising confluence in the philosopher Deleuze, the psychoanalyst Bion, and phenomenological psychologist Gendlin on what Deleuze terms the immediate "sense" of understanding and Gendlin calls "felt meaning."Beneath its more differentiated propositional articulations, all three understand this phenomenon as a felt sense of constantly shifting coherence and incoherence, and based in...
Prior studies have reported variously on the presence or absence of dissociative effects at subanesthtetic doses of ketamine administered for treatment-resistant depression. This mixedmethods study emulated the protocol used for the studies in question, with IV administration of 0.5mg/kg over 40 minutes with eight experienced ketamine users. Quantitative measures were generally insignificant...
Off-label use of ketamine as a mind-altering substance did not begin in the laboratory, but in the psychedelic culture that grew out of the 1960s counterculture movement. Whatever the risks and limitations of such experimentation, without them the remarkable therapeutic effects of the drug might well have gone unnoticed, and unresearched. The following personal accounts-both inspiring and...
A Model for Informed ConsentInformed consent is important for every medical intervention, and the unique nature of ketamine assisted psychotherapy (KAP) calls for a particularly thoughtful and detailed informed consent document.The following is an informed consent form developed for the author's use in his own private practice.No representations are made concerning its adequacy or...
The writings of the French philosopher Georges Bataille offer their own contribution to the descriptive phenomenology of mystical and numinous states, as well as a version of the modern secular or this-worldly mysticism variously anticipated by Jung and Nietzsche, and a highly original sociology and social psychology of transpersonal experience, influenced by Max Weber, that helps to open an...
The biological foundation for a shamanic epistemology is indicated by the cross-cultural distribution of a shamanic cosmology derived from knowledge obtained during altered consciousness. These special forms of consciousness involve integrative brain conditions that access ancient ways of knowing, expressive systems which have evolutionary roots in the communicative and social processes...
In what sense is dreaming real to people of different cultures? How do they come to conclude that dreaming is real, and how do they use dreams to expand their knowledge and control of real events? The reader is introduced to dream anthropology and shown that there are universal patterns to how dreams are experienced, expressed, and used by societies. The distinction between monophasic and...
Shamanic models of healing, counseling, and psychotherapy differ from Western models in that\nthey emphasize closeness to the natural world as well as to one’s body and life’s spiritual dimensions.\nShamanic practices reflect the ideals of harmony and knowledge. In shamanism, there is no division\nbetween “mind” and “body,” hence what Westerners refer to as “mental illness” is seen as part...
This paper investigates the relationship between psychoactive substances and so-called paranormal phenomena falling within the study of parapsychology. It is primarily concerned with extrasensory perception (ESP)—telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance—as well as out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and near-death experiences (NDEs). Psychokinesis (PK), aura vision, encounter experiences, and sleep...
To date, there has been a dearth of work examining the relationships between paranormal experiences and mental health.After defining paranormal experience and its prevalence, I examine a number of areas related to paranormal experience and psychopathology: psi and the unconscious, dissociation and fantasy proneness, schizotypy, transliminality and reality monitoring, child abuse, reasoning and...
During an out-of-body experience (OBE) a person experiences their center of consciousness from a spatial location that is distinctly different to their physical body. Prior research has suggested that psychologists and psychotherapists may be reluctant to discuss the content of their clients OBE accounts due to a lack of understanding about the nature of these experiences. Yet, other research...
Neurobiological advances have resulted in growing interest in many psychological phenomena\nheretofore resistant to scientific scrutiny, including within transpersonal psychology and\nparapsychology. These advances perhaps can resolve longstanding tensions between these\ntwo psychological subdisciplines, which have generally been treated as disparate. To\nimplement such a rapprochement requires...